To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time: A Memoir

by Matthew Salesses

From the critically acclaimed author of The Sense of Wonder and Craft in the Real World comes a deeply personal, poignant memoir, weaving together Salesses' multiple adoptee, Asian American, orphan, husband, father, and, finally, widower

Matthew Salesses has spent his career writing about the power of storytelling, but he wasn’t prepared for the story of his own life to fall apart. A Korean American adoptee, Salesses grew up unsure of who he was—until he fell in love and started a family with a native Korean, Cathreen. But when Cathreen was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer, the map they made together suddenly led nowhere. After her untimely death, Salesses realized he would need new paths, new stories, new philosophies, new ways of understanding the world, to navigate the unknown landscape of loss.

To Grieve Is To Carry Another Time is a stunning, thought-provoking meditation on what grief can offer the grieving, illuminating the way to embracing yourself, finding your community, and even loving and changing the world.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Adoption

224 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication December 1, 2026

About the author

Bestselling author of The Hundred-Year Flood and Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, among other books. Craft in the Real World comes out Jan, 2021. I’m adopted.

Reviews

[Irene]

Thank you to Little Brown for the galley!

Lovely, heartbreaking, thought provoking, raw, and dreamlike, To Grieve is to Carry Another Time captures all the multitudes of grief. As we age, our score of griefs can only grow, a deeply personal and unique tally, and yet it is a feeling so primordial you can’t help but see your grief in another’s. I felt adrift in Salesses’s writing, floating in his personal galaxy of loss and longing and loneliness, and in that drift I saw bits and pieces of my own pain and felt a little less alone. I can’t recommend this book enough, truly a beautiful read.

[Tina Panik]

Reviewed for Library Journal; full review appears there.

[Ryan Brandenburg]

Reviewing a memoir is always difficult because the content is inherently personal. I do not intend to minimize the author’s life experience; instead, I’ll review this book solely based on writing and structure.

This upcoming memoir caught my attention when I saw it available on NetGalley. The blurb sold is a memoir exploring multicultural themes of love, loss and grief explored by a Korean author who was adopted in America as a child and suffered severe loss when his wife died from cancer way too soon.

Even with occasional emotional moments, I found the book overly written and disorganized; it functions more as an educational and philosophical study of grief and loss.

I also disliked the structure. The author shifts between life events—such as his adoption, the death of his first wife and marriage to his second wife—so frequently that the narrative becomes unnecessarily confusing. A more linear approach might have served him better.

This is my first book by Matthew Salesses, so maybe this would resonate better for others who are more familiar with his previous work. I also saw it has some very high ratings on multiple platforms, so maybe I’m in the minority on this one! If this book hadn’t been so short, I definitely would have DNF’ed at around 25%.

If you’re looking for more of an educational study on grief and loss, this book releases on December 1, 2026. If you’re interested in a great memoir by a Korean author, “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner is readily available and is a far superior choice.

[Lori]

Matthew Salesses blends genres of memoir, literary and media critique, and journalism in his latest book, "To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time". It's a deeply personal work, centering on the loss of his wife Cathreen who passes away at 39 from stomach cancer, and the resulting aftermath of his reality without her. Embedded in his grief is the fact that Matthew was adopted from Korea by an American family, and has grown up questioning his own identity and origins; it was in Cathreen, who was both born and raised in Korea, that he had come to find his own path - but her loss shatters the future that he had once imagined, especially as she left behind two young children.

Loosely chronologically structured, the chapters jump between Matthew's present, to his memories of Cathreen and their life together, to his own personal musings and meditations that span a myriad of related topics - historical and contemporary fiction, history, art, pop culture, media, and more. It is in these passages that we come to to learn more about both Matthew and Cathreen, and the complex environment in which they grew up. It's also here where Matthew pulls apart his own grief and loss, when the one he loses has been so pivotal to his own growth and identity.

A heavy, heart-wrenching, but incredibly beautiful testament to accepting loss and continuing to move forward.

[Julia]

I am a grief coach and lead a grief group at a local funeral home--many of our attendees are widows and widowers and I am ready for this book to come out to give to each of them.

This is so beautifully written, encompasses all of the unique nuances of grieving, and I couldn't put it down. Mathew is shares his journey so candidly and is so raw, this shares how grieving impacts us, changes us, and that there is hope as we move forward.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to read this arc and I'm talking about it to anyone who will listen. Hoping to get Mathew on my podcast about grief!

Thank you to netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Jennifer]

What a privilege to receive an ARC of this beautiful book. Thank you to NetGalley!

To Grieve Is To Carry Another Time appealed to me because I am drawn to memoirs of grief. And here is the word "grieve," right in the title. Salesses puts himself on the page and draws in his reader from the very first word. While at first glance this is a book of grieving the loss of his wife, Salesses confronts many other identities and experiences in doing so. Life, of course, is not easily divided into singular identities or experiences.

This is a short book that I had to force myself to read slowly. I found myself alongside him as he worked to come to terms with his grief, through his own words and experiences and also through seeking out the the work and words of others.

This memoir is somehow both raw and full of intellect, at times matter of fact while also full of questions and pain and longing. I highly recommend it.

[Janene Frank]

Memoirs are such a personal endeavor. I do not like to rate the author's experience or how well I related or did not relate to their experience. This book wrought with grief, propelled by love was difficult for me to follow. The structure jumped from the present to past memories with his wife. I simply had a hard time following. I think this could be because of where I am in my grief journey. Sometimes one might not be ready to follow someone else's very personal, very heartbreaking experience.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and Netgal;ley for the ARC.